


Best Not to Linger

by nerdsandthelike



Series: I Count the Time Out Loud [2]
Category: Billy Elliot (2000)
Genre: Debbie Wilkinson left Everington, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, mentions of Billy Elliot/Michael Caffrey, mentions of Debbie Wilkinson/Original Female Character, mentions of Debbie Wilkinson/Original Male Character, more character than plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22409113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdsandthelike/pseuds/nerdsandthelike
Summary: Her mother had gotten what she wanted, after all, for Debbie to leave Everington, to leave England, and to live a life. Debbie had managed, had made some kind of life for herself, but there was only so much that her mother could understand the life that she had created.Or, Debbie Wilkinson: breaking hearts.
Relationships: Debbie Wilkinson & Mrs. Wilkinson
Series: I Count the Time Out Loud [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1612732
Kudos: 6





	Best Not to Linger

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to commenter Steph on my first Billy Elliot fic for asking me what Debbie was doing. I realized that I did actually know, and that’s what this is. Thanks also to Eiiri for commas and reassurance. 
> 
> This is directly inspired by a conversation in "We Will Stand, Shoulder to Shoulder," but I don't think it's strictly necessary to read that one first. You do you. 
> 
> As always, I don’t own these characters. Also I'm not doing the accent, and this has not been Brit-picked. But Debbie has lived outside of the UK for 20 years, so let’s just pretend that any mistakes are hers and not mine. And I still haven’t seen the movie!

It was too fucking early in New York City when Debbie took her mother’s call. It was so early that the woman in her bed was still asleep, so she was on the fire escape in a too-big sweater smoking a cigarette instead of inside in the warmth. Debbie loved her mother, not in the dramatic, tearful way people loved their parents in the movies. But practically, almost unsentimentally. Thinking it made her feel like a British stereotype. Twenty years in America and there were some things she still couldn’t lose or forget. At least stoicism was nearly as attractive as the accent to Americans. 

The stoicism was all from her mother, too. Not that her father had been especially emotional. But he had been distant, like an island too far out to see it clearly. She couldn’t tell if he was really that stoic or if he was just hiding his emotions. She just didn’t know him well enough. She’d gone back for his funeral just a few years ago and stood blankly beside the coffin. Her mother hadn’t cried either. That’s where the stoicism came from. She knew her mother enough to be sure of the similarity. Her mother had been loud and harsh and cared more about the career she never had than about the daughter she did. But her mother still loved her, cared for her, told her the truth. And so Debbie loved her mother too. 

An old boyfriend with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from some mediocre American university had once tried to convince her that she should be blaming her mother for her problems. That her upbringing had somehow fucked her up. Debbie nearly broke up with him on the spot. She knew she had her problems, but he didn’t need to drag her mother into this. He never brought it up again. She broke up with him anyway six months later when she got a job in Chicago. 

It was easier, in some way, to love her mother practically and from the other side of an ocean than to fly around the world and embrace in a beautiful moment of perfect, mutual understanding. It was easier to call every two weeks and talk for half an hour and then get on with living their own lives than to pretend to be the kind of family the movies and her exes expected them to be. Her mother had gotten what she wanted, after all, for Debbie to leave Everington, to leave England, and to live a life. Debbie had managed, had made some kind of life for herself, but there was only so much that her mother could understand the life that she had created. For all her pretensions of being something greater, for all that she pushed every child she could out of Durham, for all that she hated that town, Debbie knew that her mother, too, had a life. She had surrendered herself to the rhythm of small-town life, of knowing everyone you meet, of eating at the same restaurants and drinking at the same pubs and teaching little girls with no talent to pirouette for pennies. She was not happy, but she could not bring herself to leave. 

So Debbie talked to her mother early on Sunday mornings when a good girl would have been in church and a worse girl than Debbie would have been sleeping. This morning, her mother called a couple minutes after the hour, giving Debbie time to finish her cigarette and watch the sky slowly lighten. 

“Hey mum,” she said, setting the butt in the ashtray beside her. 

“Morning, Debbie.”

The first few minutes were idle chatter. Debbie asked after her mother’s hip and told her about her most recent job. Debbie appreciated that her mother never pried. Never asked when she was coming back to visit. Never asked her who she was dating. Never hinted about marriage and grandchildren. Thirty minutes twice a month was enough for her to feel like a part of her daughter’s life.

There was a break in the conversation, and then her mother said, “I spoke to Billy Elliot yesterday.”

It had taken years for Debbie to decide how she felt about Billy Elliot. He was one of the first boys she’d really taken a fancy to. They understood each other in the way that kids sometimes do. And then he had started to dance, to really dance. And suddenly, this motherless brat was her mother’s favourite child. She resented him, or thought that she had resented him, for a while. She had still fancied him, but with more anger this time. And then he was gone as soon as he had come into her life. He was still her mother’s favourite, but she didn’t talk about him anymore. Once he left, Debbie’s mother never raised the topic of Billy on her own.

Sure, when he returned to Everington, Billy would come to her mother’s house and sit awkwardly in the parlour sipping tea. First it was awkward because everything was so big and formal, then because he was a teenager with too many limbs and even a dancer’s control could not help him with that, and then because it had been too long. He was an adult, graceful and tall and beautiful the last time she’d seen him. He was twenty and perfect and completely out of place in her mother’s shabby parlour whose decor had not changed in a decade. He was an outsider, then, and Debbie had nothing to say to him. 

When he had been away, she had still heard about him, just not from her mother. Michael Caffrey took the opposite approach as her mother. He would not stop talking about Billy. They became friends after Billy left, not because they had anything in common, but because they had gone through something together. In Billy leaving, something had happened to the two of them. Perhaps it had happened to Debbie’s mum and to Billy’s dad and brother as well. But the adults already knew how to hide it, how to ignore it. Or maybe something different happened for them. Maybe it didn’t affect them the same way because it wasn’t their first heartbreak.

So Michael came over and the years passed. Nobody especially wanted to be friends with the fairy. Debbie probably could have had friends, but she didn’t like any of the other students. So she and Michael would skip class and smoke instead, and they would talk about the future and what it would be like to leave Everington. In all of Michael’s dreams, Billy was there. Billy this and Billy that. He wanted to go to London because that’s where Billy was. He wanted to go into the theatre, like Billy. He wanted to have a real shot, the kind of shot that only Billy had ever gotten. Debbie listened and only occasionally thought that it was sad that her mother and her best friend both liked Billy fucking Elliot more than her.

But whenever he returned to Durham Billy was kind, and she couldn’t really hate him. She never chose to spend much time with him, and Michael disappeared whenever he came back. But he stopped in the street whenever he saw her, or whenever he passed her on the way to visit her mother. He asked how she was and what she was doing, and he had no fucking clue what he had done to her life, so she forgave him somehow. He was beyond her now, and all she could do was move beyond him. So she had seen him for the last time twenty years ago, right before she left England. He had congratulated her on her job offer and they had carefully not talked about what it actually meant to leave Everington for a polite minute before he went in to see her mother and she went out to get pissed.

Her mother was not one to gossip, and she had not brought up Billy Elliot or his visits in many years. But apparently he had come to see her yesterday.

“Mm…” Debbie replied to her mother’s announcement. “And how is he?”

“Same as always,” her mother said. “A little older, but he’s Billy. He and Michael finally got married, you know.”

Her mother had mentioned at some point that Michael and Billy were an item. She had guessed as much. She knew it would happen eventually. She was glad, in a vague distant way, that they had really made it this far. It was like knowing that your favourite restaurant as a child was still open, even if you would never eat there again. Some sort of nostalgia.

“Good for them,” is what she said.

“He asked after you,” her mother continued. “He didn’t know that you and Michael had been close.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“I said that Michael wouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“About me?”

“Just what you’ve told me. You’re in New York. What you’re doing. Nothing much.”

“Good. You know if you tell him I’m a spy, I’ll have to kill him.”

Her mother’s laugh was short. “If you keep saying that you’re a spy people will start to believe you.”

“I’m just too interesting to work in computers and people know it.”

Her mother didn’t reply, just changed the subject to the mess her girls were making of their fifth position, and the topic of Billy Elliot slipped away.

By the time her mother had hung up, the woman in her bed, Laverne, a friend of a friend who she had met at drinks the night before, was awake and typing something out on the screen of her phone. She went back in and explained why she had been out. Laverne made her brush her teeth before she would kiss her. The cigarettes, Laverne said, tasted horrible. Debbie made coffee, and Laverne asked about her mother. They had talked mostly about the places Debbie had lived the night before. Everyone liked to hear what it was like to live in Los Angeles or Atlanta or Philadelphia. It was easier than talking about family.

Talking with her mother was normal enough, but perhaps it was hearing, even a little bit, about people from her past that made her restless again. Or maybe it was just that time. She had already lived in New York, years ago, when she first came to America. She was barely an adult and had believed all the stories about how New York was the place to live in America. Then she had lived there long enough to realize that was a lie and left for long enough to miss it and move back. But that was nearly two years ago now. It was time to move on.

One of her favorite exes had just texted her to let her know that he was moving to Seattle. They had broken up because he was going back to Singapore to take care of his mom when she was sick, and Debbie hadn’t been ready to leave Miami yet. So they parted ways, but she knew he was single, and maybe if she moved to Seattle, they could try something again. She liked the Pacific Northwest. She had only ever moved once for a partner. She had been twenty-five, and Jen had been wonderful and gotten a job in Portland. Living in Portland with Jen had sounded like paradise. And it was, for almost four years. Until Debbie realized that she needed to move on more than she needed Jen. That was when she had moved to Philadelphia. But Portland had been lovely. So maybe she could do Seattle.

She shivered as she walked Laverne to the door and kissed her cheek and promised to be in touch. She would keep that promise. They would go for dinner or maybe a drink next week, and maybe there would be more. But it would not be long. Debbie would move again soon. It was too cold in New York. She needed more sunshine. Not Seattle, then. She had heard good things about Austin, though. Maybe it was finally time to give Texas a try.


End file.
